with many an artful fib,
Had in imagination fenced him,
Disproved the arguments of Squib,13
And all that Groom could urge against him.14
But soon his rhetoric forsook him,
When he the solemn hall had seen;
A sudden fit of ague shook him,
He stood as mute as poor Macleane.15
Yet something he was heard to mutter,
“How in the park beneath an old tree,
(Without design to hurt the butter,
Or any malice to the poultry,)
He once or twice had penned a sonnet;
Yet hoped, that he might save his bacon;
Numbers would give their oaths upon it,
He ne’er was for a conjuror taken.”
The ghostly Prudes with hagged face
Already had condemned the sinner.
My Lady rose, and with a grace—
She smiled, and bid him come to dinner.
“Jesu-Maria! Madame Bridget,
Why, what can the Viscountess mean?”
(Cried the square hoods in woeful fidget)
“The times are altered quite and clean!
Decorum’s turned to mere civility;
Her air and all her manners show it.
Commend me to her affability!
Speak to a Commoner and Poet!”
[Here 500 Stanzas are lost.]
And so God save our noble King,
And guard us from long-winded lubbers,
That to eternity would sing,
And keep my Lady from her rubbers.
Daughter of Jove, relentless Power,
Thou Tamer of the human breast,
Whose iron scourge and torturing hour
The bad affright, afflict the best!
Bound in thy adamantine chain
The proud are taught to taste of pain,
And purple tyrants vainly groan
With pangs unfelt before, unpitied and alone.
When first thy Sire to send on earth
Virtue, his darling child, designed,
To thee he gave the heavenly birth,
And bad to form her infant mind.
Stern rugged Nurse! thy rigid lore
With patience many a year she bore;
What sorrow was, thou bad’st her know,
And from her own she learned to melt at others’ woe.
Scared at thy frown terrific, fly
Self-pleasing Folly’s idle brood,
Wild Laughter, Noise, and thoughtless Joy,
And leave us leisure to be good.
Light they disperse, and with them go
The summer friend, the flattering foe;
By vain Prosperity received,
To her they vow their truth, and are again believed.
Wisdom in sable garb arrayed,
Immersed in rapturous thought profound,
And Melancholy, silent maid
With leaden eye, that loves the ground,
Still on thy solemn steps attend;
Warm Charity, the general friend,
With Justice to herself severe,
And Pity, dropping soft the sadly-pleasing tear.
Oh, gently on thy suppliant’s head,
Dread Goddess, lay thy chastening hand!
Not in thy Gorgon terrors clad,
Nor circled with the vengeful band
(As by the impious thou art seen)
With thundering voice, and threatening mien,
With screaming Horror’s funeral cry,
Despair, and fell Disease, and ghastly Poverty.
Thy form benign, oh Goddess, wear,
Thy milder influence impart,
Thy philosophic train be there
To soften, not to wound my heart,
The generous spark extinct revive,
Teach me to love and to forgive,
Exact my own defects to scan,
What others are, to feel, and know myself a Man.
The Bard
A Pindaric Ode
The following Ode is founded on a tradition current in Wales, that Edward the First, when he completed the conquest of that country, ordered all the bards that fell into his hands to be put to death.
“Ruin seize thee, ruthless King!
Confusion on thy banners wait,
Though fanned by Conquest’s crimson wing
They mock the air with idle state.16
Helm, nor hauberk’s twisted mail,17
Nor even thy virtues, Tyrant, shall avail
To save thy secret soul from nightly fears,
From Cambria’s curse, from Cambria’s tears!”
Such were the sounds, that o’er the crested pride18
Of the first Edward scattered wild dismay,
As down the steep of Snowdon’s shaggy side19
He wound with toilsome march his long array.
Stout Glo’ster stood aghast in speechless trance;20
“To arms!” cried Mortimer, and couched his quivering lance.21
On a rock, whose haughty brow,
Frowns o’er old Conway’s foaming flood,
Robed in the sable garb of woe,
With haggard eyes the Poet stood;
(Loose his beard, and hoary hair22
Streamed, like a meteor, to the troubled air)23
And with a Master’s hand, and Prophet’s fire,
Struck the deep sorrows of his lyre.
“Hark, how each giant-oak, and desert cave,
Sighs to the torrent’s awful voice beneath!
O’er thee, oh King! their hundred arms they wave,
Revenge on thee in hoarser murmurs breathe;
Vocal no more, since Cambria’s fatal day,
To high-born Hoel’s harp, or soft Llewellyn’s lay.
Cold is Cadwallo’s tongue,
That hushed the stormy main;
Brave Urien sleeps upon his craggy bed;
Mountains, ye mourn in vain
Modred, whose magic song
Made huge Plinlimmon bow his cloud-topped head.
On dreary Arvon’s shore they lie,24
Smeared with gore, and ghastly pale;
Far, far aloof th’ affrighted ravens sail;
The famished Eagle screams, and passes by.25
Dear lost companions of my tuneful art,
Dear, as the light that visits these sad eyes,26
Dear, as the ruddy drops that warm my heart,
Ye died amidst your dying country’s cries—
No more I weep. They do not sleep.
On yonder cliffs, a grisly band,
I see them sit, they linger yet,
Avengers of their native land;
With me in dreadful harmony they join,
And weave with bloody hands the tissue of thy line.”27
“Weave the warp, and weave the woof,
The winding-sheet of Edward’s race.
Give ample room, and verge enough
The characters of hell to trace.
Mark the year, and mark the night,
When Severn shall re-echo with affright28
The shrieks of death, thro’ Berkley’s roofs that ring,
Shrieks of an agonizing King!
She-Wolf of France, with unrelenting fangs,29
That tear’st the bowels of thy mangled Mate,
From thee be born, who o’er thy country hangs30
The scourge of Heaven. What Terrors round him wait!
Amazement
